Overview

The iWay Hot Backup extension is a distributed backup facility. In distributed backup iWay Service Manager (iSM) can be configured to operate normally with its own compliment of listeners, and also to carry a configuration of listeners and services defining work to be done in the event that a monitored ISM fails. In this configuration, the ISMs share the workload in normal operation and in the event of unanticipated failure of one ISM the other can invoke the required services to accomplish the tasks of the failing ISM.

For example assume that there are two ISM instances in the enterprise. The first is configured with four active listeners, A, B, C and D. The second has its own listeners E, F, G and H. In this case, the first ISM instance would also be configured with E, F, G and H, but these would be marked as inactive. Similarly, the second ISM would be configured with A through D, marked inactive. As these two ISMs run, each handles its own four listeners. In the event of failure of the either ISM, the other marks the inactive listeners as active and begins to handle the failing workload.

To accomplish this, install the Hot Backup extension, available from iWay Software. This adds a new listener type, BACKUP, to the list of available listeners. The BACKUP listener must be configured on the ISM that is to handle the monitoring and recovery of the four listeners. No additional software is required on the ISM being monitored. The ISM being monitored needs to point to the server on which the Backup listener is running through the backup settings screen on the console.

You can use the following diagram for reference purposes during the configuration stages of the iWay Hot Backup extension.


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